


Behind the Wall

by nozenfordaddy (fenna_girl)



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-23
Updated: 2013-09-23
Packaged: 2017-12-27 09:53:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/977384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fenna_girl/pseuds/nozenfordaddy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You're embarrassed about this, you really are. Imagining how the people next door have sex, with your palm to the wall as if trying to forge some connection.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Behind the Wall

That neighbor of yours is fighting with her boyfriend again and you're sick of the arguing and the sound of things breaking and the very loud sex that follows. You’ve become a part of their dysfunction, eagerly anticipating the next bout, waiting with your ear metaphorically to the wall to hear them crumble and drag each other down. You dread it as much as you crave it, you're really thinking about calling the authorities this time but you don't want them to know you can hear. 

You don’t want to have to admit that you don’t want it to stop.

You're sure he's not hitting her or there would have been no hesitation to pick up your phone and get her help. Despite his lanky height, and the tightly controlled whipcord strength, obvious in the way he holds himself, he's never looked the type who would hit a woman and she’s certainly not the sort to allow it. 

But that doesn't mean he's not hurting her. 

That they aren’t hurting each other. 

In fact, you think maybe that is the point, to hurt each other and push away from where they seem to be heading. It’s going to come to a head soon, and you’d be lying if you said you weren’t anticipating it as much as you think they probably dread it.

You think they're strange, they both look so nice and oddly well-matched despite the fact that her clothes scream bohemian and his scream banker. Albeit a stylish banker. There is a depth in them that you don't often see in people as young as they are, as though they’ve shared something you will never understand.

You want to understand, in a way you have never wanted to understand one of your own lovers; you want to understand this couple. Maybe that is why you’re drawn to the drama that unfolds behind the wall, because hidden though it is, they share a passion that you’ve never experienced. There has to be a reason for your obsession with them. They’re not the kind of people anyone would think fight the way they do. Not the kind of people who look like they would enjoy wild, angry sex. You find it difficult to combine her serene face with the scornful mouth you can hear yelling. She has a way with words that he seems to lack. She often says things that are alternately cruel and insulting; as if she's trying to get a rise out of him. As if she is trying to get some display of emotion out of him, even if it isn’t the emotion you think she wants.

The gentleness in his hands when he holds the door for her and his precise controlled exterior seem at odds with the violence that makes the walls rattle. You think there’s something strange about a man who looks so cerebral, but who through the wall sounds so physical as though expressing himself through his body is the only way he knows to show what he is feeling.

You’d think she was trying to get him to leave her except you’ve heard her crying herself to sleep at night, the sobs echoing through the wall during his long absences. You wonder sometimes when she sleeps, it seems like she can’t possibly get more than a handful of hours a night. But she never looks tired. 

Just haunted, like a woman whose dreams exist just out of reach.

She was always just that sort of interesting American girl next door, studious and quiet with a hint of something else that you never got to experience closely because you only exchanged pleasantries in the hall. She had the occasional visitor over to do whatever good girls studying abroad do in their spare time. Drink wine and talk about philosophy, or art, or whatever it is they are studying that week and pretend not to be bourgeois capitalists, living off their parent’s money, inside their thrift store clothes. 

Truthfully she’s always been the sort of the streaky type when it comes to visitors. Until recently there were a handful of friends from the university male and female and the occasional overnight visitor, study groups and partners for projects that came in and out carrying blueprints and models and books. They would sit on her balcony and smoke and talk about their studies and you would listen from your kitchen through your open window and think about how nice it would be to be young again.

She was gone for a few weeks, a month, longer maybe. You lost track, because it would be strange to keep tabs like that on a girl you hardly know. When she came back, she was different, though you couldn’t say how. That was when he started coming, when your obsession truly began where before it was just idle curiosity about the girl who lived next door. She has regular visitors now and not just young people from the university, a motley bunch of characters that make her more interesting than before.

There is a disreputable looking scoundrel who flirts with everyone in the hallway, British or possibly South African by his accent and the sort of man that women dream about. Probably some men too, if the way the young man on the first floor looks at him is any indication. He has an almost chameleon like way of blending in as though he belongs anywhere and that is nearly as attractive as his devil may care smile.

There are a couple children who come with the older man and the lost looking fellow who must be their father, it’s nice having childish voices echoing in the halls and you listen to that too as they run up and down the stairs playing a game of tag. One day you notice their father sitting at the top of the stairs as they play below listening as well, playing with a small metal top – if you hadn’t been so embarrassed to be caught you would have spoken to him. You think he might understand this thing with you and listening to your neighbor, there is something in the way he is listening to his children’s laughter that makes you think he knows all about obsession.

There is a Hindustani man, jovial and full of laughter and the Asian man who arrives with a car and driver, reserved and polite when he passes in the halls. 

Then there is him, in his impeccable suits and perfectly slicked back hair, his tie knotted just so and an impossible shine on his shoes.

She isn’t alone anymore; these people are family in the same way the people from before were just visitors in her life. But they make a strange little family, so mismatched that if you hadn’t seen them together you wouldn't believe it yourself. But that is what it feels like they are. Some nights you can hear them sharing a meal in companionable silence; the type of silence that comes from knowing each other’s secrets. You can occasionally hear laughter and the rise and fall of voices and it makes you feel good to know she isn't as alone as she seems.

He joins them, a part of the little group, son, brother – you don’t know where he fits in but you know he belongs and not just because of what you’ve heard him say to her when they are alone. Each of them is integral to the whole, and it scares you to think that this thing between them might destroy it all and she will be alone again. You will be alone again, with the silence.

He goes away when they do, but he always comes back, minutes or hours later – on days when there has been no one. It is as if this relationship has to be kept separate from the others, as if they think whatever it is between them has to be hidden and you struggle to understand why. What is it about them together than they can’t share with the others? Whether it is the fighting, the sex or the fact that in their quieter moments you’re convinced they’re in love with each other and trying so hard to push it away it boils over into violence you don’t know. You think their friends would be happy for them, but you realize you really don’t know anything about their lives other than what you can hear through the wall and the occasional glimpse of their hands touching or the way the share a look in the hallway.

Still, it's addicting in an awful, perverse sort of way; listening to them. It is like a drug that you cannot stop even though you know it isn’t good for you.

"You think if you don't look at me, I'll go away?" she asks, voice raised, tense and hard and you think he must be leaving, back to her as he heads to the door. Maybe they're not yelling but you feel like they're yelling. "You think if you lock up your emotions you’ll forget? This isn’t a dream; you can’t just change things to suit your needs."

“No it isn’t a dream,” You can't hear all of what he says, the end is biting and cold and you feel for them both. “You don’t know. You weren’t here to watch it all fall apart. All you know is what Dom let you know. I won’t let that happened again."

"Fine!" she snaps, and in your head she’s thrown up her hands in exasperation, let them drop to rest on her hips. She’s small, petite, and it’s possible that his height could be imposing but you know that won’t stop her as she stalks across the room and forces him to confront her. "It has nothing to do with me; it's not me you’re angry at so you don’t have to be angry with him. Because it's not me that lov--"

"I didn't ask you to. Ever." He cuts in before she can make the confession neither of them are ready for. Her voice drops and you strain to hear feeling guilty for wanting to know what she’s saying now but not guilty enough to walk away.

You can't hear them for a while and maybe, just maybe, you think, the argument is over before it started. He’ll go and she’ll open a bottle of wine and sit on the balcony in silence before crying herself to sleep. 

That thought is put to rest as something shatters against the wall and you jump, hand coming up to cover your mouth and muffle the startled yelp.

"That could have hit me!" he bellows and you stiffen. It’s worse tonight and you don’t know why, it’s an anniversary of something – you heard that much when the others were here earlier - and you wonder if that is what’s made this fight different.

"That was the point," she growls back more angry that you’ve ever heard her and another crash shatters the otherwise calm stillness of the evening.

It's so awful. You don't know why people want to do this to each other. You'd think they'd be better off without each other if you hadn't seen the matching need in both of them first hand. There's something about them, something they share that makes them too damaged for anyone else.

"You’re overreacting.” He swears and you shudder at the contained violence in the tone and fumble for your phone in case tonight is the night you have to call the police.

“Am I? Or should I have reacted like this before you made me feel like a dirty secret." Her reply is low and her voice is pained. You suddenly wish you could move away and stop listening but you're straining closer, waiting for his reply. It’s voyeuristic and crazy but you need to know how this ends.

"You aren’t a dirty secret,” he is insistent. Voice cracking as though he realizes this is the moment when he loses her. She laughs a bitter lonely sound and her voice drops again, rising to a whisper that you have to strain to hear. 

“And I’m not Mal.”

“I don’t want Mal!” He almost bellows it, and your gasp echoes hers, he has her by the arms now you think. He’s fighting the urge to shake her. “I never wanted her… not like this.”

There’s silence then, you take a deep breath, he’s kissing her, you know it the way you know this isn’t over. The sound of a body hitting the wall should startle you but it wasn't unexpected and you barely flinch when it happens. It sounds painful and you imagine that she'll have a bruise in the morning.

You shouldn't be listening to this. You should not be listening to a very angry man shove his very condescending girlfriend into a wall and fuck her. This is extremely tacky and wrong of you but you can't help yourself, for some reason you want to hear where this goes.

"Oh--oh God," her voice is husky. There's nothing sexy about what you're imagining is happening on the other side of the wall but the raspy sex filled sound of her voice is like chocolate on skin and it makes your nerves tingle.

Her shirt is open, you think, the camisole she wears in lieu of a bra pushed aside, her shoes on the kitchen floor and he's shoved her pants down just enough to touch her. She's not wearing panties; just because she knows it will drive him over the edge when he realizes she was planning for this moment.

He moans, deep and guttural and it vibrates through you as you imagine him lifting her as she kicks free of her pants and there’s a clatter as his belt hits the floor. You'd be furious if it was you, but you've never been thrown against a kitchen wall and proceeded to be fucked with all the sound effects. You don't even know how people do it against walls. It's got to be difficult.

"Oh, God, harder--" He’s inside her now, you can tell by the way her voice has changed, the timber of it sultry and pleading. She starts to whimper and you lift a shaking hand to the wall you share and lay your palm flat against it. His answering moan vibrates through the plaster and races through your blood.

“Ariadne,” his voice is a hoarse murmur. The entire world's him giving it to her against the wall. You wish you couldn't see it in your head, but once begun, the sexual imagination's got to have it in surround sound. 

You can see the way he's got her pinned against the wall with his body, the way she is wrapped around him, nearly naked while he is still mostly dressed. You can imagine the marks she's putting on his body with teeth and nails that he’ll cover up with a high neck and buttoned cuffs, the bruises he's putting on her thighs as he leverages her against the wall. 

If it was you, you would want those bruises, the ache that you can only imagine comes from a sexual encounter like this one. Hard and fast, without caring that people might hear.

Damn visual imagination.

You're embarrassed about this, you really are. Imagining how the people next door have sex, with your palm to the wall as if trying to forge some connection. You gasp when they climax seconds apart and everything lapses back into silence so all you can hear is your own breathing, uneven and rapid as though it was you and not your neighbor being nailed against the wall.

The inevitable post-coital fight, the one you can't always hear, but the one that always ends the same way is done in hushed undertones.

"Get out," her voice shakes and you can imagine her standing in the middle of the room naked but for her top, hair awry, unable to look at him; angry at herself now for wanting him to stay when she knows he won’t. You imagine he is straightening his cuffs like you’ve seen him do in the lobby any number of times, smoothing his hair and fastening his clothes. He is impeccable, untouched by her emotion and hiding his own. You know the slamming of the door will be followed by the sound of her sobbing then the silence you used to associate with having a good neighbor and have come to associate with desolation.

Tonight you're surprised. He doesn't leave. The door doesn't slam shut. You strain to hear and you think that maybe they're silent. At least, you can't hear anything. You think they're looking at each other, half-naked and hurting and wondering. You think everything has changed with those words, even if they aren’t ready to admit it.

You've been there, maybe not after sex like that, but you've been there. It's the kind of moment, that weird sort of non-event that changes relationships; a blink of an eye where everything changes. You wonder if the reprieve will last or if it’s just the eye of the storm, the thought that their fights could get worse makes you shudder.

You turn off the lights, checking your locks and closing the window before changing for bed and slipping between cool sheets, still thinking about the couple next door. 

You wonder if they're making love, you can see it in your head the reverent way he would touch her if they could just stop being so angry, so scared of something you haven’t figured out yet. You can’t hear from here, so you don’t know if they’re talking in hushed tones or kissing wordlessly. You want to believe that tomorrow you will see them at the café down the street drinking coffee and happy together, but you aren’t sure that is possible. You want this to stop, so you can walk away from this obsession with them.

But that could just be a dream.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the iReverse Big Bang. For Art Prompt 112 by nessismore. Art is [ here](http://i.imgur.com/cgc2dsJ.png).


End file.
